It was a yellowed copy of The Chronicle from Dec. 5, 1969. She had found it while going through the papers of her late father, a retired news editor here.

The front page was plain weird.

Great gobs of blank space took the place of many of the stories, including the day’s top news.

The inkless columns were under headlines like “Seek Clues in Slaying” and “‘We need your help,’ police say.” Each big block of blank contained a tiny, boxed note: “This space is vacant because the news article which normally would have appeared here is of controversial, or unpleasant, nature.”

I flipped the paper open. There, on page three, was a normal-looking front page. It bore all the same headlines as page one but included the text of the missing stories.

What was going on?

Under the headline “Easy Way Out!” was this explanation: “We took the step in hope the ‘shock’ value of blank space will help us to illustrate a point we have tried to make to many readers who write us to complain of newspaper overemphasis on bad news.

“It’s an easy way to handle complaints. But it does not meet The Chronicle’s duty to publish the news and to keep our readers informed.”

John S. HausmanAs the French say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The same argument goes on today. It has gone on through all the (mumble-cough) years I’ve been a journalist.

My sympathies are with the charcoal-scratchers. But I can see both sides.

It’s true that much of what we report is “bad news.” It’s certainly true of my main beats — courts, corrections, crime.

To be honest, it does get dreary sometimes. Interview enough grieving family members, cover enough smirking murder defendants, see enough brooding, bulked-up prison inmates, and you can get a jaded view of life.

But.

That’s our job: To tell you about the unusual, the striking, the not-routine ... the news. It’s the old man-bites-dog idea.

And, while letting readers know about “bad news” is a big part of our responsibility, it isn’t all we do. Some news is good, and we report that, too.

On Monday, the day I started writing this, our front page carried a story about a law firm donating its former office building to a women’s shelter.

On Christmas Day, we reported on an auto-repair shop’s generous policy of letting cash-strapped customers pay when they could afford it.

And some tragedies eventually turn into inspiring stories.

Two come to mind. In 2009, I wrote about Minnie Steward Burrow of Muskegon, who lost two sons to drive-by shootings six years apart. She was converting her unspeakable loss into a way of helping others by speaking on behalf of the Victim-Witness Unit of the Muskegon County Prosecutor’s Office.

A few months ago, I reported on an ambitious White Lake cancer-mapping project directed by volunteers Claire and Polly Schlaff. They’re the mother and wife of Montague native Doug Schlaff, who died at 35 from a rare form of cancer in December 2008.

So when you read The Chronicle, you get a mixed bag: The good and the bad, the uplifting and the sad.

As for the 1969 “censored” front page, don’t look for a rerun. We’re not as combative nowadays.

How did it work 41 years ago?

The next day, The Chronicle reported a mix of reader reactions. Many spoke favorably of the unusual edition. One called it “a gimmick which did not impress me at all.” Another called it “disgusting.”